Enterprise Service Management: Keeping Eyes on the Money

Don’t mess with finance because that’s where the money’s at. They have touch points in every part of the organization and insights into how decisions in one department can affect other parts of the business. Finance is the backbone of an organization because of their focus on providing accurate financial information, mitigating business risks, enhancing transparency of resource utilization and performance information, and identifying opportunities for innovation and growth. No, this is not a business class and we won’t drudge on about how finance is amazing. We want to tell you where enterprise service management (ESM) fits into all of this — and that’s everywhere!

Systems need to be in place to ensure tracking visibility, compliance with tax laws and regulations, as well as the ability to manage payroll and procurement requests, bring the focus in on strategic objectives.

Did You Say Spreadsheets?

Factory overhead. Accounts payable. Reconciliation. Capital projects accounting. Fiscal close. Cost budgeting. Balance sheet. We’re sure you’ve heard those terms before in your career. Perhaps you’ve had to assess the budget to determine if new team members can be hired or whether a team outing can be planned. Maybe you’ve had to prepare a quarterly financial forecast for your department. Bottom line, you’ve interacted with finance in your career, utilizing some types of spreadsheets, emails, or forms. That’s where enterprise service management comes in…say hello!

Spreadsheets can be cumbersome in terms of data and change management, and often times those that need to see it become flummoxed as they get lost in the shuffle and lose track of changes. That could mean a budget revision or financial forecasting nightmare in the works! Just automate it! With enterprise service management, you have change management at your fingertips to monitor service requests and implement larger changes required financial documents and processes. Not only that, those that need it will be able to have real-time visibility and insights on the financial requests they have made, and need completed, to successfully run their projects.

Consolidation is the Name of the Game

You use one set of software for procurement, another for payroll, and yet another for expenses. Many of these platforms don’t collaborate with each other on the backend, and the lack of tools to consolidate requests, policies, and information can hamper compliance. With enterprise service management, you have everything within a single platform. Easily pull in data that you need for visibility through concise dashboards, that show you the data you want. Service requests are received with accurate financial information, and there is a trail of information available at your fingertips, like for an internal audit.

Consolidation also creates opportunities to make and automate workflows. Build in process templates for areas like accounts payable, labor, billing, budget prep, assets and liability, and reconciliation.

Self-Service Love

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, empower the people. Whether it’s submitting an expense, querying for payroll, or submitting a purchase order, enabling the employees to be at the center of service interactions takes away the burden in the finance department. Let’s say an employee submits a purchase order and is awaiting approval from a manager. They can chase down that specific manager instead of going to finance. ESM enables you to take away the middleman and gain seamless productivity.